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Topic: UI 1 / 2 ???? (Read 4591 times)

I have had a brief look at the new UI when .42 came out , I found it a bit slow on my hardware and reverted back to UI1. Now with .43 it has all changed again , I no longer have any folders just a list of all files , this is crap as far as I am concerened as I have 4000 mp3 and 950 videos on my server now actually chosing something to watch is a nightmare . Does anyone know how to get back the old UI ? Or how to configure the new one. I checked changelogs and it mentions improvements , curiuos what those are.

Hi nite_man , I already have Normal Horizontal selected , not V2 , testing from my windows orbiter it shows the old initial screen , but once you select video it goes to a new screen with a very long list of files , and what seems to be place for images for each file , but no folder lists , i hvae lots of folders and sub folders which I can no longer access. How do I change / configure this

There is a utility "UpdateMedia" that runs in the background and always adds your media files to a sqldatabase. You can confirm this in pluto admin by going to files & media, media files sync. If the files have a check mark they're in the database. The log is /var/log/pluto/UpdateMedia.log, and the files go into teh pluto_media database, File table.

The file browser has changed, both for UI1 and UI2. It used to be that it was doing a directory listing. This meant you had no way to do sort or filter.

Now with .43 it uses the database. This should be much better. Now you can sort by title, performer, etc. Also you no longer have to remember what is where. If you bring up music, for example, and touch the shortcut for 'Jennifer Lopez' you get all her songs, no matter where they may be scattered around the house.

If you choose the options buttons and sort by filename, the results should then be the same as they were with .42, meaning you see a directory tree and can drill down like before. The layout is still different because we made the cover art bigger; it was very small before and hard to read. but the content should be the same.

It should be easier for the kids to find what they want, I think, because now if they want 'Barney', they just "B", whereas before they needed to know which drive/directory it was on and drill down. If it's not working, that probably means UpdateMedia didn't add the media files to the database somehow. Please check the log and the database.

You don't have a 'go' button in the lower right corner of the screen? If not, send me a private message and if you either turn on remote assistance, or send me a copy of your pluto_main, I'll try to debug this. I heard someone else report this, but never found the cause.

>> How do you suggest we access file that do not have clear names but rather song 1 , song 2

For videos it should be automatic. Sort by Title is the default, and if a file has no attribute 'Title' (attribute type 13), the title is assumed to be the filename.

For music it's more tricky because the default is to show Artists, then drill down to Albums, and lastly Titles. Unless, of course, you click 'options' and choose sort by 'title' or 'filename'.

Making it 'sticky' is a good suggestion. I'll add it to the todo list.

To edit the attributes, in pluto admin go to files & media, media files sync. Chose the directory from the pane on the list, and the file in the right pane. You can add attributes. You can also cleanup attributes this way; updatemedia will automatically synchronize any changes in the database back into the id3 tags in the files.

You don't have a 'go' button in the lower right corner of the screen? If not, send me a private message and if you either turn on remote assistance, or send me a copy of your pluto_main, I'll try to debug this. I heard someone else report this, but never found the cause.

Hi, you can debug on my system. I reported that missing GO button. But funny is that if you click on that empty area, it still works. Dan from Pluto also noticed that his GO button dissappeared...

Quote from: "aaron.b"

>> How do you suggest we access file that do not have clear names but rather song 1 , song 2

For videos it should be automatic. Sort by Title is the default, and if a file has no attribute 'Title' (attribute type 13), the title is assumed to be the filename.

For music it's more tricky because the default is to show Artists, then drill down to Albums, and lastly Titles. Unless, of course, you click 'options' and choose sort by 'title' or 'filename'.

Making it 'sticky' is a good suggestion. I'll add it to the todo list.

I have also posted few suggestions about small enhancements that would ease organization of media collection:

I also remember really simple solution that was implemented in Freevo: they had optional simple text file in each directory that simply changed view settings for that directory - so user could either with text editor or through GUI setup different view settings. In some directories one is interested solely on cover arts, on other wants to sort in reverse time order (security videos), etc...

Also updatemedia could pick up some other standard concepts of giving more information about media file - there are quite some external MEDIA INFO grabbers that for instance put cover arts as folder.jpg in albums's directory or save snapshot under same filename, but with jpg or png extension etc...

I guess it would be quite easy to extend updatemedia daemon to use that info. Maybe it would be also easy to have .id3 files in text, so it's easy to check its content - or of course make more user friendly web-admin interface that is quite a job...

Quote from: "aaron.b"

To edit the attributes, in pluto admin go to files & media, media files sync. Chose the directory from the pane on the list, and the file in the right pane. You can add attributes. You can also cleanup attributes this way; updatemedia will automatically synchronize any changes in the database back into the id3 tags in the files.

I've kindly asked Valy to put some more info on Wiki about how to edit media attributes. But it would be tremendous enhancement if this could be done on per directory basis for all files at once, for atributes that are shared among them (like cover art, album name, artist, etc..).

>> mythtv recordings are being made with cryptical filenames. I use simple Perl script (attached) that symlinks them into real names. Maybe this could be integrated in updatemedia or something similar

The .43 release does this automatically now. You should leave the file names as-is in Myth. The myth plugin will not rename the file, but will automatically add all the attributes (Director, Actors, Title, Channel, etc.) so it's all sortable